Rosalía’s Restless Heart

In music,” writes the Italian priest Luigi Giussani, “what man pays homage to is something else, something he is waiting for.” Upon hearing a beautiful song, something is “awakened inside him”—the foretaste of an “Other” to which “he immediately bends his soul . . . he grasps what he can grasp, but he waits for another thing.” This intuition poignantly describes the role music played in my own conversion. I can still remember specific songs that—despite not being explicitly about God or religion—were so profound that I couldn’t help but be overwhelmed with wonder, asking how it was possible for such beauty to exist and where it ultimately originated from.